Spy Rock Road

March 18, 2015 2:16 PM

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When music industry icon, and founder of the now defunct Lookout Records, Larry Livermore needed a drummer for his punk rock band The Lookouts in the mid-1980s, he was out of options. According to his memoir "Spy Rock Memories," he had run through two drummers who didn't work out; one because of creative differences and a contentious break-up, and the other due to weariness and a sense of futility in battling the harsh weather conditions just to practice with the band on a remote mountain in Northern California where they lived, a few hours north of the cities of Oakland and San Francisco. Out of desperation and a lack of options, he asked the son of one of his neighbors, 12-year-old Frank Wright, III; aka Tre Cool, if he wanted to be in a punk rock band.

This choice was a bit of an embarrassment for the band, especially for The Lookouts' bass player Kain Hanschke, publicly known as Kain Kong, who was an older teenager at the time and naturally didn't want a kid in the band. It didn't help that Tre Cool had never played the drums before, much less sh...